The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services and more particularly to canceling unwanted telephone calls.
Telecommunications system users commonly receive unwanted telephone calls. These calls are often placed by callers, such as telemarketers, whose identities are not revealed by traditional caller identification systems. Accordingly, the user does not discover the identity of the caller until after the user has answered the call and has begun speaking with the caller. Once the user has begun speaking with the caller, many users find it difficult to end the call even if it is unwanted. The callers are often aggressive and the user typically does not want to be perceived as being rude to the callers. Accordingly, the user may be forced to engage in unwanted telephone calls for extended periods of time because they do not have what they view as a polite way of ending the calls.
One system that enables a user to disconnect an unwanted call and send a message to the caller, in what the user might view as a polite manner, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,651,053 to Mitchell. The system disclosed in Mitchell disconnects an unwanted call and sends a message to the caller in response to the user hanging up, or performing a flash hook at (i.e. hanging up) their telephone. However, telecommunications service providers typically offer a number of other services, such as three-way calling, that are initiated by the user first performing a flash hook at their telephone and then providing some additional input to signify the service sought by the user. Since the system described in Mitchell is automatically activated by the user performing a flash hook, this system cannot be used in conjunction with other services that are activated by the user performing a flash-hook. Therefore a system that overcomes these deficiencies is needed.